The Night Villa

by Carol Goodman

  In addition to Phineas Aulus, Dr. Lawrence was fond of quoting Juvenal, who railed against the eastern cults that had flooded his Rome, and of drawing analogies between the proliferation of oriental religions in ancient Rome and the popularity of Eastern religions in modern-day America. In addition to classical authors, he brought in newspaper horoscopes, videos of the 1993 standoff between the FBI and David Koresh’s Branch Davidians in Waco, and clippings from the National Enquirer and The Star on modern-day cults. One of the articles he brought in, published in the National Enquirer soon after the Waco siege, was called “The Ten Most Dangerous Cults in America.” I was more than a little startled to see that the Tetraktys was listed as number seven.

  After that class, I went to his office to ask if I could have a copy of the article. When he asked me why I wanted it I admitted my boyfriend belonged to the Tetraktys and then burst into tears. Dr. Lawrence (as I still thought of him then) closed his office door and sat on the edge of his desk handing me tissues until I was done crying. When I started to apologize for my outburst, he cut me off.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “My sister Patricia belonged to the Branch Davidians. My folks went bankrupt paying deprogrammers to get her back. When my mother was dying of cancer in ninety I managed to get a message to her. I got a telegram back pretty much blaming the cancer on our mother’s lack of belief. The only good thing about my mother’s death from the cancer in ninety-two is that she never knew all that stuff that came out about Koresh—about how he was sleeping with the women and children in the group—or that Patricia was killed when his followers set the compound on fire.” I murmured condolences, but he waved them away and kept talking. I could tell he was talking a lot to give me a chance to gain control over myself, for which I was grateful. “I’m afraid I haven’t had much patience with cults since then. I suppose the bias shows up in how I teach this class, but I figure, what the hell, maybe it’ll save some kid from joining a crackpot group. Show this to your boyfriend,” he said, handing me the article. “Maybe he’ll see reason.”

  Of course, showing the article to Ely made things much worse. He tore it apart, first figuratively, discrediting point by point the article’s allegations against the Tetraktys, then literally, scattering the newsprint confetti across our bed. From then on not only was any information I carried back from the class suspect, but Ely said he could tell when I was carrying bad energy to the meetings. Other members noticed it, too, he told me. At one meeting, when I asked why the initiates at the New Mexico compound weren’t allowed contact with their families, a wan red-haired girl stood up and asked if I could please not come anymore because I was polluting the atmosphere.

  So instead of attending Tetraktys meetings and study groups I joined the little circle of students who accompanied Elgin Lawrence to Schultz’s Beer Garden over on San Jacinto. Elgin (as I then began to call him) held forth about philosophy under the live oaks like Plato on the steps of the Academy—only with a bottle of Shiner Bock instead of wine.

  I found during that fall, which like most Austin autumns held the summer heat far into October, that I liked nothing better than to sit under a live oak at Schultz’s and tip an ice-cold bottle of Shiner Bock down my throat. I grew more and more reluctant on those afternoons to make the long trek back to the shuttle bus, so I started taking lifts from Elgin.

  He’d just bought the yellow Porsche with money he said he earned consulting on a Hollywood gladiator movie. It seemed a shame not to take the car farther than the couple of blocks up to Hyde Park when the house was empty and when the roads climbing into the hill country west of town beckoned. Driving with the top down, the sun setting over the mesquite-covered hills, the air smelled like mimosa and smoke. We drove out to The Oasis on Lake Travis, where we’d have frozen margaritas and steak fajitas. (So what if this cow had once been a man, I’d think. If you really believed in transmigration then the butcher had only freed the cow’s soul to move on to a better host.) Heading back into town, we’d end up at Elgin’s house in West Lake Hills for a nightcap and a swim in his pool. We drank so much and drove over so many dark twisting roads it was a miracle we didn’t get killed. I half expected it to end that way. If there was order in the universe (as Ely believed) and what I was doing was wrong, we’d end up wrapped around a pole on 2222—a road that had claimed three of my high school classmates before graduation.

  We didn’t die. We didn’t even get caught. The later I stayed out, lingering at Elgin’s practically until dawn, the later Ely stayed at the meetings. In the back of my mind I thought I’d stop when it got cold. It just never did. That year the heat tenaciously held on all the way to Halloween, the time when usually the cold fronts would move in and break the heat. This year there were only a smattering of rainstorms and then more warm weather.

  It wasn’t until the last week in November, when Elgin went to a conference in Los Angeles, that I started coming home earlier in the afternoons—and so did Ely. We had Thanksgiving at M’Lou’s: Ely filling up on sweet potatoes and corn bread, but saying he wanted to save the pecan pie M’Lou had baked for later. When we got home that night he made me wait in the living room while he went into the kitchen. Then he reappeared, holding the pie aloft with a candle burning in its center to celebrate our “anniversary.” Blowing it out, I promised myself that I would end the affair.

  When I knew Elgin was back, I left him my final paper on Phineas Aulus with a note asking if I could have the rest of the term off to study for my orals. I also gave him a poem I’d been working on all term about the archaeologist Wilhelmina Jashemski. I’d finally thought of the last three lines.

  Vesuvius has nothing new to say,

  haze-shrouded, calm. This all goes by so fast.

  There’s more than one kind of catastrophe.

  He sent me a note that read, “Ita vero.” Latin for yes, but also, literally, “So it’s true.” Code, I surmised, for “So it really is over.”

  I told myself I was relieved that he hadn’t made a fuss.

  On the last day of the fall term, though, I found a note in my box from Elgin asking me to come meet him at Les Amis. I took the fact that he’d chosen a coffee place instead of a bar as a sign that he’d accepted the change in our relationship, but I’d forgotten that Les Amis served wine and beer as well as coffee—and I’d underestimated Elgin’s vanity. If a relationship was going to end, he’d be the one to end it.

  “So how are things with your true believer?” he asked when I sat down. His hands were folded across a manila folder and a bottle of red wine stood on the table between us. There was an empty glass at my place that he filled before I could say no. He’d picked up a tan in Los Angeles—and a new suit. Compared to the bedraggled students and professors around us Elgin positively gleamed. I took a sip of wine and told him that Ely seemed to be spending less time with the Tetraktys.

  “But he still belongs?” Elgin asked.

  I admitted he did.

  “Then I think you ought to see this.” He slid the file folder across the table. I opened it, expecting another newspaper article. Instead, I found a copy of a report headed “Investigation into the Tetraktyan Community.” Above the title was a round symbol: a shield wreathed by laurel, surrounded by stars and then encircled by sun rays. The symbol itself seemed vaguely cultish, but when I looked closer I saw it was a government seal.

  “This is an FBI report,” I said, looking up. “How…?”

  Elgin held a finger up in front of his lips. He looked so much like a stern librarian that I started to laugh, but then I saw how serious his expression was.

  “Are you…?”

  Then he laughed. He’d been trying not to, which is why he’d looked so serious. “I’ve got a friend in the Bureau,” he said. “Never mind how I got it, just read it. You’re not going to like it, but I think it’s best you know.”

  I started to put the folder in my bag, but he shook his head. “Read it here. I’ve got a conference with another student I’m meeting here
, but I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  He got up and went to the front of the restaurant where a young girl in jeans and pink navel-baring T-shirt stood. Sure, I thought, a conference. I suspected he wanted me to know that it wouldn’t take long to replace me. I also suspected that he’d dug up this official-looking report as a parting salvo to Ely, who he must see as his competition. Who knew if the report was even genuine? It was a Xeroxed copy so the seal could have been faked. It occurred to me that I should close the folder and walk out, but what if it were real? I read the first line: “The Tetraktyan Community, although outwardly benign in appearance, bears striking similarities to the Branch Davidian Community founded by David Koresh. It could well be another Waco in the making.” Then I read the whole thing.

  The report described the community in New Mexico as a walled compound with underground bunkers well supplied with water and nonperishable foods. The compound also had its own generator and water tower. The report went on to describe the eerie silence of the site: “Initiates are sworn to a five-year vow of silence that is strictly enforced. This includes written contact with the outside. There is only one telephone in the main office and calls out are taped in order to prevent initiates from trying to make contact with their families. By cutting them off from family and friends, new members are vulnerable to brainwashing. They are also kept on severely limited diets of grain and vegetables, leaving them physically weak and impressionable.”

  Just what M’Lou had said.

  The report recommended increased surveillance of the compound and infiltration by undercover agents to prevent another situation like Waco. I noted that despite its somewhat histrionic tone, the report contained no proof the group was purchasing firearms or that members were being harmed or abused. Still, I couldn’t dismiss it. One thing was for sure: if I showed this to Ely’s parents, they would no longer think that the Tetraktys was a math club.

  I looked up and scanned the room for Elgin. He sat at a table with the pink-T-shirted girl. She twirled her long blond hair and laughed at something Elgin had just said. As if aware of my attention, Elgin turned his head and saw me looking. He rolled his eyes at the next peal of giggles from his companion, no doubt to convince me he was above such amusements. It made me wonder what he’d told people about his time with me. Had I been just another diversion that he made light of with his colleagues? When he looked back at the girl I took the last page of the report with its dire prognostications and official-looking seal and stuck it in my bag. Before Elgin could extricate himself from the giggling co-ed, I got up and left.

  I walked home, quickening my pace when I saw that it was growing dark. I’d promised Ely I’d be home before dusk. It was the solstice, which the Tetraktyans celebrated instead of Christmas or Hanukkah. Ely had told me that he had something special planned. When I turned onto Avenue B a block south of our house I saw that our little bungalow’s windows were ablaze with flickering light. I had a vision of the Waco Siege, which M’Lou and I had watched on TV, with armed FBI agents in armored vehicles circled around the compound as it burned to the ground. I ran toward the lit house, scenting smoke on the air and hearing the crackle of flames, but when I got to the house I realized the smell came from our neighbor’s fireplace. The crackle was just the sound of pecan shells underfoot. My house was ablaze with light, but that was because there were lit candles in every window. Dozens of them. Opening the front door, I saw glass votives on every available surface. A double row on the living room floor made a pathway—like the luminarias the Mexicans put out on the East Side.

  My breath still coming in short gasps from running, I followed the candled path to the back of the house, to Ely’s study where he sat cross-legged on the floor in a circle of candlelight. His closed eyes flicked open as soon as I stepped over the threshold.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Fighting back the dark,” he answered. “Don’t you remember what day it is? You were supposed to be back hours ago. Where were you?”

  “I…I had a conference with a student…” I then remembered that classes were over. Who would I have had a conference with? “Here,” I said, taking the last page of the FBI report out of my bag and handing it to him. “You’d better have a look at this. It’s about the Tetraktys. It makes them sound dangerous. I don’t know if it’s true, but…” I heard the quiver in my voice, an aftereffect of thinking the house was on fire, and let it swell into a sob. Let Ely see how upset I am, I thought, let him see I’m afraid. If he loved me, he’d want to protect me from being afraid. He’d reassure me or, better yet, quit the Tetraktys altogether.

  Ely read the page without speaking, without so much as blinking. He must have read it twice because I saw his eyes go back to the top of the page. When he was finished, he lowered the paper and looked up at me.

  “Who gave this to you?”

  This was not the question I was expecting. I thought Ely would be shocked at how the Tetraktys was portrayed here, or that he’d attack the writer, not whoever gave it to me. So I was taken by surprise. Still, I should have just told the truth: that Professor Lawrence gave it to me. After all, I was taking a religion class with him and Ely knew he devoted class time to modern-day cults. But standing there, in the glow of all those candles and caught in Ely’s gaze, I just couldn’t bring myself to say Elgin’s name. Maybe I thought I was in a grade B horror movie and that the flames would whisk out at the sound of my lover’s name.

  So I lied. “One of my students came across it when she was researching cults for her Roman Life paper. She showed it to me when I questioned her sources. She’s the one I had the conference with.”

  “Really?” Ely asked, holding the page up by his thumb and forefinger and tapping its top edge with his index finger. “Then why does it have Dr. Elgin Lawrence’s fax number here on the top?”

  No avenging wind blew out the candles but my guilt must have been clear on my face.

  “You’re sleeping with him.” Ely’s voice was curiously flat, as if he were reciting something.

  “Not anymore,” I said.

  It was as if I had kicked the air out of him. His body collapsed in the middle and he bent over at the waist, his forehead nearly touching the floor. A lock of dark hair fell so close to a lit candle that I could smell it singe.

  I knelt beside him, upsetting a candle, which poured out hot wax onto my hand. I didn’t cry out. Instead, I poured out my confession. I’d felt so empty after losing Cory, I told him; he had the Tetraktys, he’d retreated from me. I knew it was wrong and I’d ended it a month ago when things started getting better between us.

  He flinched when I said a month ago. He sat upright, the blood draining out of his face. “It was going on up to a month ago?” he asked.

  I could only nod. He got up and left the room, kicking over candles as he went. I sat where he’d left me, listening to glass shattering throughout the house. I almost hoped then that Ely would burn down the house around us. Surely with all those candles being knocked over, that’s what would happen. But then I looked at one of the candles at my feet and saw the Hebrew letters. Yarzeit candles. I remembered Ely’s mother saying that she kept them for blackouts because they went right out if you knocked one over. When I’d asked her if that wasn’t sacrilegious she’d shrugged. I say a little prayer with each one, she told me. After all, every day is the anniversary of someone’s death.

  The twenty-second of December became the anniversary of our death: Ely’s and mine. He’d packed and left that night and I never heard from him again. Not until…unless these cryptic signs could be considered hearing from him. Will there be more? Will there ever be more than signs? I close my eyes against the glitter of the sea. The sun has fully risen now and my T-shirt has dried in the warm breeze. I say a little prayer for just one more sign and when I open my eyes I see I’ve gotten what I prayed for. Coming around the headland to the east is the same boat I saw two days ago: The Persephone.

  When the boat is about twenty f
eet away it stops. The engine dies and the man who had been steering it, whom I’m unable to identify because of his cap and dark glasses, tosses an anchor off the bow. Without another glance in my direction, he takes off his T-shirt, jeans, cap, and glasses, leaving on navy swim trunks. For a moment I think, no, this can’t be Ely. Ely was thin and pale. This man is lithe, muscular, and, in the early-morning sun, golden. Then he dives into a patch of sea so lit by the sun that it looks as though he has leaped into fire and been consumed by it. He reappears beneath the surface, coming toward me like a flaming arrow shot through the water. He surfaces beside the rock, tossing his head to shake his thick black hair off his brow, and smiles a smile as dazzling as the glittering water.

  “Hello Sophie,” he says, as if it had been five minutes instead of five years since we saw each other last.

  “Ely,” I say in return, less in greeting than to convince myself that it’s true, that it’s really him. I hold out my hand to help him up onto the rock, but he scrambles up without my help and sits a foot away from me, cross-legged, grinning.

  “Come here often?” he asks. It’s not much of a joke, but I’m so relieved that he’s willing to attempt any humor that I laugh. The Ely I first knew had a good sense of humor. He’d lost it when he joined the Tetraktys.

  “It’s only my second time,” I say, gazing around us at the bright blue water, “but it’s already one of my favorite places on earth.”

  He looks around, too, and nods approvingly. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool. All it’s missing is food. Have you had breakfast?”

  I shake my head, amazed that otherworldly Ely would bring up something as mundane as food.

  “Then you’ll be my guest,” he says, waving his hand toward the anchored boat. “I think the coffee should be almost done.”

  We swim to the boat, Ely leading. He scrambles up the stern first and then lowers an aluminum ladder for me. When I’m on deck he gives me not just a towel, but a terry-cloth robe and slippers. I smell fresh-brewed coffee.